The downfall of Malcolm Turnbull was in large part engineered by the right wing climate denial faction of the Liberal Party – it was not merely a matter of personality clashes, as some pundits would have you believe. On this, I agree with Dennis Atkins and Alan Kohler (speaking on ABC with Geraldine Doogue): According to Atkins, "the Liberal Party seems incapable of dealing with the issue of emissions, of climate change. A senior minister who's … [Read more...]

In August 2012 I decided to make a wholly futile gesture: I would stop buying The Australian newspaper. This was in protest at the grossly irresponsible way in which that paper (and in fact the entire Murdoch stable) has stoked the fires of public misunderstanding and mistrust of climate science over the past decade. (See for example: How The Australian Newspaper Warps The World of Climate Science; and Top physicist accuses The Australian … [Read more...]

Summary: A recent study concludes that individuals with greater scientific comprehension tend to apply that skill in ways that reinforce their existing value commitments. This is an example of what is known as motivated reasoning. Ironically, a 'skeptical' climate change blogger misconstrues the study to claim that it supports the cause of climate change skeptics (read denialists), when in fact precisely the opposite is the case. Now read … [Read more...]

The plantetary alarm bells are ringing, but climate change denialists claim they hear nothing.
It is good to see that there are some philosophers thinking about how climate denialism should be treated in the public sphere. In a helpful series of posts, the contributors to the Climate Ethics blog have distinguished between legitimate scientific skepticism and a climate change disinformation campaign. See particularly the posting by Donald … [Read more...]